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1

Consumers do not have any power to decide this DRM issue and anyone who thinks they do has been asleep at the wheel. DRM isn’t even in the consumer’s best interest in the first place, let alone competing standards that will be decided not by a free market, but the leveraging power of the corporations behind the DRM schemes. And, once there is a standard, an inevitability of the market place, the loser will be every person who was stupid enough to pay $0.99/track for the defunct format.

Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on April 7, 2005 at 6:52 PM (CDT)

2

I’m still trying to figure out why Sony calls that thing a “Network Walkman”? I don’t see it networking with anything. *confused*

Posted by FallN in New York, NY on April 7, 2005 at 8:22 PM (CDT)

3

Codemoneky said “once there is a standard, an inevitability of the market place, the loser will be every person who was stupid enough to pay $0.99/track for the defunct format.”

DRM came about at the music industries request otherwise they weren’t going to let Apple etc licence their music simple as that and you are right it has nothing to do with the consumer, it’s about the music industry protecting it’s jewels.

The standards you yak on about will not happen as too many vested interests in not wanting it to happen. So Apple’s AAC becomes the standard will MS follow no it will continue with WMA.I f big government thinks it can legislate, then it’s sadly mistaken Believe it or not there is a standard and it’s called MP3, so those who did pay $0.99 per track won’t lose anything after all. Apple offer AAC and MP3 and there is nothing to stop it offering any other format so no one will lose their $0.99 tracks

Everyone equates this to betamax v vhs and it’s a incorrect comparison as there are many audio formats which people use ogg, flac, aac, wma but it’s MP3 which rules them all. Also as a sidenote Betamax is widely used in south america and the far east, Sony only stopped making betamax machines about two years ago, so VHs won in nthe west but other parts of the world it wasn’t king.

Posted by mac daddy in United Kingdom on April 8, 2005 at 5:56 AM (CDT)

4

<And Mac Daddy continues to keep his head buried in the sand, or up his butt, we’re not sure which…>

The only way we will not achieve a *DRM* standard is if the direct distribution market continues to remain as small as it is today. Also, while you are right that mp3 is a standard for the consumer, it is not acceptable to the industry, and no industry equals no market unless you think some magic time is coming when all the music artists will throw off the shackles of the labels and simply sell us mp3s direct from their websites.

Current DRM depends upon there being a company available to authorise your product when you switch machines or DAPs. While failure of a subscription service DRM simply means you move onto another, failure of the iTMS means you better burn them and re-import quick, assuming that’s even permitted by the hardware manufacturers.

You have a very tiny mind that seems unable to project current movements in the market more than a year or two into the future…

Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on April 8, 2005 at 9:02 AM (CDT)

5

The video link doesn’t work for me…

Posted by ipodman715 on April 8, 2005 at 12:56 PM (CDT)

6

The video link was working earlier, although it was like a 25MB download and it was really slow so I killed it. He/she probably removed the video due to bandwidth issues.

Posted by AndyH in Berwyn, PA on April 8, 2005 at 2:28 PM (CDT)

7

Re:Duke
“Students writing for Duke University’s student newspaper have criticised the university’s iPod programme, claiming that the decision to seed all freshmen with iPods was just a PR stunt.”

“The iPod programme has appeared to be a PR move from the beginning, this seems to reaffirm the fact that the University is not interested in education as much as it is interested in its image. Duke is giving away iPods, even after the iPod program was a failure, because it will put it in the national spotlight again and because it hopes to use the iPods to lure a strong freshman class,” concludes the report.